Tarter to Leave Livermore’s Top Job

“The budget is roughly through Congress. The National Ignition Facility [NIF] is back on track. The lab is in good shape,” says C. Bruce Tarter, explaining his decision to step down as director of the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as soon as a successor is found. “I wanted to leave at a time when things are stable.”

Things may be stable now, but Tarter’s tenure has been turbulent. About two years ago, shortly after then Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson proclaimed that NIF was on time and on budget, the lab let on that, in fact, the project had major cost overruns and technical difficulties. In addition, Livermore faced discrimination and security concerns in the wake of the Wen Ho Lee espionage accusations at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

At the height of NIF’s problems, Tarter did not get a pay raise. Since then, he has overhauled NIF’s management team, and NIF got a budget boost of more than 50%, to $3.4 billion. NIF has also been put on a stepwise schedule, under which the huge laser, intended to simulate extreme pressures and temperatures in a nuclear weapon, will be built in stages (see Physics Today, January 2001, page 21 ). The most exciting thing about NIF, says Tarter, “is that we expect light will be flowing in the facility within the next calendar year, and we’ll start experiments with 8 of 192 beams within the next two years.” In its evaluation of Livermore in 2001, DOE for the first time rated the lab outstanding in management, operations, and programs.

“The fact that NIF was able to turn itself around is no small tribute to Bruce,” says John McTague, vice president for laboratory management at the University of California, which oversees Livermore for DOE. “He has been an excellent leader during a tumultuous time.”

Tarter oversaw the transition at Livermore from nuclear testing during the cold war to the current stockpile stewardship program, in which nuclear weapons are safeguarded and studied but not exploded. As part of stockpile stewardship—of which NIF is the centerpiece—the lab now boasts the world’s most powerful supercomputer. Tarter also put some of the lab’s discretionary funding into counterterrorism research. That was before such research was popular, says McTague. “It was very far-sighted.” Also on Tarter’s watch, Livermore helped sequence three human genes.

Financially, the lab is strong: In fiscal year 2002, its budget is set at $1.5 billion, up more than 10% from FY 2001. Livermore turns 50 on 2 September and is celebrating by hosting lectures and other public activities throughout the year.

Tarter announced his resignation on 7 December, seven years to the day after he assumed the directorship. An astrophysicist and 34-year veteran of Livermore, he is the lab’s second-longest serving director. He plans to remain at Livermore.

Tarter says his successor “will have to make sure the national security labs stay connected to science—that’s a constant issue. He or she will have to make stewardship continue to work. That will require rethinking the role of nuclear weapons as to how it fits into the national defense posture. Counterterrorism will be a challenge. And NIF will have to be managed successfully to completion.”